2 min to read
Toma's Review Of: Gone Girl (2014)
Short Summary Of My Review
Gone girl is a little too long and drives its point home a little too hard losing subtly, but it’s a good watch that stayed in my head more then any other psychological horror in a while. 8.5/10.
Full Review
It’s a David Fincher, so you go in expecting a great twist. Even David Fincher knows this, and he knows expecting a twist makes you watch a movie differently, so he clues you in to there being a twist pretty much blatantly early on. You know there’s foul play in the kidnapping incident immediately. The mistakes are told to the viewer by the police. Then the film develops, and it turns out that the wife is crazy. Being forced to live with someone you know killed people and would kill you so you aren’t ruined by the media is terrifying. More terrifying to me then Hannibal Lecter controlling all crime, or Mr. Ripley convincingly becoming Dickie who is actually dead, because those aren’t as possible as Gone Girls scenario. If that was happening right now to a celebrity marriage, we wouldn’t know anything about it.
Gone Girl is definitely Ben Affleck’s best performance, and Rosamund Pike’s is even better. She is so convincing in her shiftiness that it’s scary just to watch her talk because you don’t know if she means anything behind what she’s saying. Just the way she stares at people is scary. The one thing that I didn’t like is the theme of not trusting the news, because it feels forced and can be interpreted in 2 ways. On the forced front; I know it helps drive the plot, but I don’t think that’s great script writing when the message from the news broadcast is unclear. On the surface, it’s saying don’t trust the news / big media, which is fine, but why does the pregnant woman have to be the liar? At some point (if I remember correctly) Ben Affleck’s character literally mentions the media only trusts her because she’s “America’s perfect girl”, which is fine, but am I supposed to put pregnant women under more scrutiny for duping the media now? Is the message people are too trusting of famous women / moms to be. Maybe not, and I pulled this feeling out of thin air, but because of the constant “America’s perfect girl” “America’s princess” it came off like that to me. All in all, the news plot device is a little shallow and takes a little bit away from the amazing acting, but not horribly. I didn’t really know Ben Affleck could act, so I think that deserves an 8.5/10.
